Dame Judi Dench approves of Daniel Craig as 007

20-Jan-2006 • Casino Royale

Spymaster "M" thoroughly approves of her new James Bond - reports Reuters.

Judi Dench, who has reached a whole new international audience playing the boss of the world's most famous spy, first took on the role opposite Pierce Brosnan.

Now she is to face Daniel Craig in "Casino Royale."

Asked whether she would treat the first blond Bond like an errant schoolboy in their first screen encounter, she told Reuters: "You will have to wait and see."

"The chemistry happens the moment you meet them or it doesn't happen when you meet them. And I have met him and I liked him enormously. We had a laugh and that always bodes well," she said.

Dench, who established a reputation as one of Britain's foremost stage actresses before carving out a film career, said: "The stage has always been my first love but I have enjoyed doing a lot of films."

Her big breakthrough came playing Queen Victoria in "Mrs Brown."

"Suddenly, I had a choice of film scripts. When I went over to New York for the first time for the (press) junket for Mrs Brown I was asked many times 'Apart from Mrs Brown and M, what other parts have you played?'

"That is the whole of the Shakespeare canon out of the window, a bit of Chekhov, a bit of Ibsen, David Hare, Hugh Whitemore and a lot of other people."

Dench won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar in 1998 for her cameo role in "Shakespeare in Love."

On Thursday, she won her 11th BAFTA nomination from the British film industry for her part in "Mrs Henderson Presents" as a feisty widow who buys an abandoned theater and stages Britain's most famous nude review.